Status: Deprecated

This article covers a version of CentOS that is no longer supported. If you are currently operating a server running CentOS 6, we highly recommend upgrading or migrating to a supported version of CentOS.

Reason: CentOS 6 reached end of life (EOL) on November 30th, 2020 and no longer receives security patches or updates. For this reason, this guide is no longer maintained.

See Instead:
This guide might still be useful as a reference, but may not work on other CentOS releases. If available, we strongly recommend using a guide written for the version of CentOS you are using.

Step 1 - Install REMI and EPEL Repositories and Packages

rpm -ivh http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
yum -y install php php-mcrypt php-pdo php-mysql pdns pdns-backend-mysql mysql-server httpd

Step 2 - Create a Database and Username

service mysqld start
service httpd start
mysqladmin create powerdns

Make sure to select your own password below:

mysql -Bse "create user 'powerdns'@'localhost' identified by 'password'"
mysql -Bse "grant all privileges on powerdns.* to 'powerdns'@'localhost'"

Step 3 - Create PowerDNS databases and tables:

Start mysql console with "mysql"

mysql> use powerdns;

CREATE TABLE domains (
id INT auto_increment,
name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
master VARCHAR(128) DEFAULT NULL,
last_check INT DEFAULT NULL,
type VARCHAR(6) NOT NULL,
notified_serial INT DEFAULT NULL,
account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL,
primary key (id)
);

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX name_index ON domains(name);

CREATE TABLE records (
id INT auto_increment,
domain_id INT DEFAULT NULL,
name VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
type VARCHAR(6) DEFAULT NULL,
content VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL,
ttl INT DEFAULT NULL,
prio INT DEFAULT NULL,
change_date INT DEFAULT NULL,
primary key(id)
);

CREATE INDEX rec_name_index ON records(name);
CREATE INDEX nametype_index ON records(name,type);
CREATE INDEX domain_id ON records(domain_id);

CREATE TABLE supermasters (
ip VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL,
nameserver VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
account VARCHAR(40) DEFAULT NULL
);

Exit mysql console by typing "exit":

mysql> exit

Step 4 - Install PowerAdmin

Login as root and run:

cd /root 
wget https://github.com/downloads/poweradmin/poweradmin/poweradmin-2.1.6.tgz
tar xvfz poweradmin-2.1.6.tgz
cd poweradmin-2.1.6/inc
mv config-me.inc.php config.inc.php

Edit config.inc.php and make sure to change password you've specified in Step 2:

nano config.inc.php

Modify db_pass and session_key to your own values:

$db_host                = 'localhost';
$db_port                = '3306';
$db_user                = 'powerdns';
$db_pass                = 'password';
$db_name                = 'powerdns';
$db_type                = 'mysql';
$session_key            = 'session_key';

Move PowerAdmin folder to Apache's DocumentRoot. We can use this droplet's IP address to manage our DNS settings

mv /root/poweradmin-2.1.6/* /var/www/html/
service httpd restart

Edit /etc/pdns/pdns.conf and add the following lines, make sure to modify gmysql-password to MySQL password you've selected in Step 2:

launch=gmysql
gmysql-host=localhost
gmysql-user=powerdns
gmysql-password=password
gmysql-dbname=powerdns

Restart Power DNS daemon:

service pdns restart

Step 5 - Create PowerAdmin Account

Proceed to installing PowerAdmin from webserver. Navigate over to your droplet's IP /install folder (in our case http://198.211.110.153/install/ ).

Create a Poweradmin admin account:

Next step is optional:

Finish the installation process, and after you get to Step 7, remove /var/www/html/install folder:

rm -rf /var/www/html/install

Now you can navigate to your droplet's IP ( http://198.211.110.153/ in our case), and login as admin with password you've specified in Step 5.

Now you can create your own DNS zone records:

You can verify that your new PowerDNS server is working by running dig against it:

dig @198.211.110.153 domain.com

;; ANSWER SECTION:
domain.com.             86400   IN      A       127.0.0.1

And you are all done!